Breathing In
by Shaye Vespertine
Summary: What was going through Cristina's mind during Drowning on Dry Land?How did she feel when they told her and everything quickly spiralled out of control?Strong MeredithCristina friendship.


Hi, this is my first Grey's Anatomy posted fic, so be nice and let me know what you liked and didn't like.

**Disclaimer: don't own, don't sue.**

R&R!

* * *

The alarm clock gave off a shrill sound that penetrated cruelly through her bleary, sleepy mind, forcing it awake.She was momentarily disoriented to find herself in unfamiliar surroundings, but that's when her mind kicked in and memories flooded her.She had spent the night at Burke's place, and she'd just woken up in his bed.

Cristina yawned and swung her legs out of bed, her feet recoiling momentarily from the iciness of the bare floor.

She pushed the bathroom door open and stepped into the shower, sighing at the battering her needy muscles received from the jet of hot water, and embraced the thought of going to work, despite her not being a morning person.Towel drying her hair in a usual rough manner made sure that Cristina was sufficiently awake to realise that Preston wasn't in bed and probably making breakfast.

This made her pause.

She was getting married to this man, whom she greatly admired in work, but couldn't say she needed so much in her private life as to get married to him.Cristina had always been self-sufficient, and because she had never been able to count on her mother she had been forced to look after herself.A few boyfriends here and there, never serious enough to last more than a few months, a job she'd craved for so long with her very being safely tucked into her drawer in the form of a contract at SGH, a newly-found crazy family with the other interns (Karev was NOT a part of it) and now out of nowhere – her marriage.

She honestly couldn't say she hadn't seen it coming – _or wanted it_, a sly part of her whispered.

Cristina's eyes narrowed nastily and she inwardly sniped to _shut up_.

_Oh great, nice work Cristina!_

_Now you're talking to yourself._

She gasped silently, horrified as a new thought slyly penetrated her mind.

She was becoming like her mother.

She catapulted herself into the closet, ran past the kitchen when she was dressed sufficiently to go out then ran all the way to the lift, only to swish back into the apartment she'd just exited and found Burke there waiting for her, a resigned, knowing half-smirk on his face. She couldn't leave because she'd come to his place with him last night, and her car was at the hospital. Cristina refused to acknowledge his smug smirk and plopped down onto the settee in the hall, muttering darkly and shooting Burke half-lidded glares.

As soon as they got into the car Cristina felt a slight tension sizzling down to her toes. Burke was handling the steering wheel calmly and efficiently like he normally did, but there was an air of unrestrained energy in his muscles that put her out of ease with herself and the whole marriage jig. Cristina purposely looked out her window as the buildings whizzed past the silent interior of Burke's car. She refused to acknowledge the fact that he has actually gone so far as to insult her independence by proposing to her, as well as the burning bit about her betraying her own self-sufficiency by going so far as actually saying "yes" damn it!

She huffed and crossed her arms over her chest and settled more deeply into her seat, silently telling a musing Burke that she was not currently prepared to remotely looking him in the eye at the moment, and wasn't likely to do so any time sooner than her daily coffee at the hospital AND some sensational surgery.

Burke accepted and understood her apparent discomfort and went with her in the way of silence.He knew her inside out and if she needed to be coaxed into accepting she was happy about this by brooding in silence and being cooler than usual, then he would let her. She had gifted him by saying yes, something he hadn't altogether expected, especially without persuasion. Now this was his gift to her.

* * *

When Cristina stepped into the hospital, she knew straight away, by some alien sixth sense that all could and would go wrong today. What she couldn't even remotely begin to imagine was that the events that had the power to bring her down on her knees were already unfolding, and a slow, relentless torture had already begun.

Before she knew what fate was about, she was standing outside the hospital entrance, silently staring at the ambulance Bailey had just ordered her not to enter. The last thing she saw was Meredith hurriedly strapping herself into her seat then a silent meeting of the eyes – the silent communication only the two of them shared – and her shoulders sagged with disappointment.

The rest of the day was a bitter blur and rush and pound and hit and fall and get up again and start over.

She didn't see Burke until early afternoon, and even then it was a brief meeting of the eyes as they rushed past each other in a buzzing corridor, both too busy to stop and unload their feelings unto the other.

When Cristina was finally taking a very short break, just enough to load the system with much-needed caffeine, she reflected that everyone had good days and mediocre days, and days that were slightly worse. She'd managed to have a bottom-of-the-chart bad day, and couldn't even snap at anyone because George was off doing whatever, Izzie she'd distractedly waved to three hours earlier and Meredith was out with Shepherd and Bailey amongst others.

Speaking to Burke was, of course, out of the question. She would deal with this on her own.

Staring out into a grey world outside the bright hospital, her coffee held in her lax fingers, Cristina ran a tired hand into her hair and stared down at her feet. The taste of the coffee was particularly bitter today, and Cristina didn't see why that should be, why today should be any different than any other day, why her shoulders were ever so slightly shaking, why a frisson of fear singed her spine.

Cristina stared uncomprehendingly at her shaking fingers then her eyes travelled with the coffee that spilled form the Styrofoam cup. Her head slowly rose and her sharp eyes settled onto the grey skies and the trees softly undulating in the wind once again.

She couldn't explain it, couldn't fathom the sense of it, what it was, where it began, whether it was real or not, and where it would lead but for some reason she couldn't wipe out of her mind the image of Meredith climbing onto that ambulance.

Cristina inwardly rejoiced for a split second the opportunity to think about something else, however brief.

She mentally scrutinised into her memories of earlier on, scrapping her bitterness at being left behind, her resigned stare of the Nazi's back leaving her there, of the happiness cum apprehension of marrying Burke and stripped Meredith's face in a way that had little to do with her being an intern for surgery, and all to do with the fact that Meredith was family.

The girl she had come to consider as "her person" had something in her face today, like she guarded an inner secret that she wasn't aware about. Something unholy and brief and grim in her eyes and her sagged shoulders, and her pursed, tired lips and her wan face had the power to make Cristina literally shake.She didn't understand it.

What had she seen into Meredith's eyes?

They had been endless feet away from each other, into two completely different worlds – she stuck here, Meredith so far into the exciting world of ghastly accidents and full-on action. What did Meredith tell her by that stare, that one meeting of their eyes, so uncomplicated so deep and profound and true and harsh, but so comforting that it was one of Cristina's few links to her inner self?

Had she glimpsed despair into those green orbs, glistening into her own?

Forgiveness? No, that wasn't it. Then what?

There was a resigned air about her person that morning mixed with something Cristina didn't have enough info to diagnose. Almost like she'd given up on something. Cristina didn't know why, but she felt that it was important she figure it out. She knew this would be of great meaning! Perhaps Meredith was just tired, and some of that had seeped into her eyes and Cristina just happened to be in the way of her stare. Then why, God, why did it feel like Meredith was trying to tell her something?!

Why did everything seem to slow down impossibly and even stop as their eyes met and both of them floated away from the fray and gently rested together – a meeting of the souls – before Meredith disappeared out of sight?

She drifted back to the here and now and she jumped to her feet, hurriedly making her way back to work, throwing the coffee cup into the trash with a loud bang that startled her heart into quickening a couple of beats. A feeling of foreboding settled on her like a perspiration cloak, choking her in a sickening miasma of untold misadventures. Cristina forcefully switched her brain into doctor mode and batted the foreboding away, though she couldn't quite manage to erase it into nothingness. She told herself that her disturbed state of mind had nothing to do with Burke's proposal or that brief window into Meredith's soul into which she'd stumbled upon that morning and glimpsed before she was taken away.

Cristina stopped before she crashed into one of the Head nurses, muttering a brief apology.

She didn't like the way that last thought had taken shape; Meredith hadn't been taken away from her, she'd simply gone out with the others to do her job. She would see her later on that night for that drinking session they'd booked at Joe's. Cristina stared outside again, unconsciously bringing her hand to stroke her neck – something she did when nervous or during times of deep distress – then with an abrupt nod, dived back into the fray.

* * *

Two and a half hours later Cristina was approached by a harassed-looking nurse who hurriedly told her an ambulance had just come in and Bailey was looking for assistance. Cristina asked her what happened to the victim, silently imploring the nurse to tell her it was something gory, impossibly difficult to cure and that they'd have to be cut open. She hazily heard the nurse tell her the woman had been rescued from drowning and they were trying to get her respiratory system back up to scratch. Cristina dismissed her immediately and ran off somewhere else. She was deaf to the nurse's indignant "Hey!" and blind to the buzz coming and going in the clinic.

Next time she was aware of where she was, Cristina found herself in the changing rooms, sitting on the floor, her eyes silently fixed on a hazy point she'd stopped focusing on long before.

_What am I doing_, she thought?

_What the hell am I doing just sitting here when there could be lots of really cool surgeries that I'd die to be involved in? I'm shaking again_, she realised. _Am I coming down with a cold or something? Maybe I've been running around too much today, and the shivers are really just muscle spasms._

_I'm dreading it_, Cristina silently whimpered. I'm dreading stepping through that door into the hospital fray.

The second she realised the cause of her inner tumult, she immediately recoiled. There is no reason for me to be afraid! It's just a stupid marriage, with a wedding dress, and guests, and a menu list, and gifts and all the other worthless trappings involved in such a stupid, mundane ritual so many people set such a large store by.

_It's not the wedding to Preston,_ the little sly voice whispered.

Cristina frowned.

_You again?_

_Of course it's the wedding; what else is it gonna be? And shut up today_, she silently added.

_No_, the voice defied. _It'll do you good to hear from me now and again. Silly, scared, cold-hearted little woman. Why do you fear someone who can love the way you do might become like your mother? Distancing yourself miles away from other people will not make you stronger, or avoid you pain and hypocrisy. It'll just increase them and make your life worse._

_Shut up_, Cristina seethed.

Snort. Pathetic.

_You really want me to shut up? Then make me._

Cristina rebelled – of all the damn things to happen to her today, she had to sit there like a wet dishcloth and have an inner argument with a voice in her head.

Chuckle.

_You ain't seen nothing yet, sister._

_And what is that supposed to mean?_ Cristina snarled, her hands balling into fists as her body tensed at the silent threat.

_I'll show you,_ the voice echoed.

_Oh, and on the subject of sisters – why don't you look at your pager, Dr. Yang?_

Cristina frowned uncomprehendingly.

_My pager?_

_Yes, Cristina._

Beep beep beep.

_Your pager._

Beep beep beep.

Cristina started and hurriedly looked at her pager screen.

Beep beep beep.

As soon as she touched it her hands went cold and her heart started beating erratically. Beep beep beep.

When her brain registered the words her eyes were reading, she choked on her breath and spluttered haphazardly for a couple of seconds, trying to get regular breaths back into and out her lungs.

Meredith hurt. Room 113. Come quickly.

Cristina's faced was a mask; a curious mixture of calm and disbelief and shock.

When she saw Izzie, George and Alex waiting outside the corridor her feet automatically sped up, till she was practically less than a foot away from them. Cristina was no longer aware of her body's actions, not entirely. "Are you sure?" a familiar voice she recognised as her own spoke out, tremulously. She searched their faces, then tried to force herself into that corridor. It was very important she escape this world, where those three were telling her that – Don't think about it, she pleaded herself. It's not real. It can't be true. Get out. Get out. Get in there.

Alex grasped her arm before she made contact with the threshold to the other world and stopped her, forcing her to look at him. "It's Meredith." He nodded. There was a look of understanding on his face Cristina was sure she'd never seen before and never wanted to see directed at her again. Her thoughts stopped being synchronised. They no longer made sense; instead they had been replaced with a disjointed litany that repeated cruelly in her head, till it hurt fit to burst.

_Meredith. Hurt. Quickly. Room 113. Bad luck. She's nowhere warm. She was taken away._

That last thought echoed viciously in her mind and her soul, which couldn't take the pain and went she went into shock.

_Taken away. Taken away. Taken away. Taken away._

_You're alone again, alone again, alone again. Meredith Meredith, don't leave don't leave, no no no no -_

Her eyes involuntarily travelled to the little window, unconsciously seeking that lone figure she both hated and needed to see.

Sheperd was sitting, literally sagged on the floor, his face a mask of calamity, eyes staring at –

Cristina froze. Her face was slack with shock, traumatised by the thoughts running through her head, hurting her beyond the physical, the only plane she was comfortable with. If the pain wasn't physical, she as a surgeon could not find ways to alleviate it on her own. She needed someone, anyone who could hug her, ignoring her snarls to get away, and comfort her and make her warm and feel at peace with herself. She couldn't get that from just anyone, though.

She needed her person.

_Meredith Meredith don't go don't go please please make it stop, come back come back come back!_

Her eyed were still on Sheperd when her visual perspective changed slightly and her body felt the sensation of another's squeezing her. Izzie. Embracing her.

_So serious so serious, my god, what happened, don't take her away no, I don't want to think about it, oh god I can't breathe, I need my person I needed to tell her I'm getting married oh god no –_

When she was able to think remotely straight and act on her thoughts Cristina forcefully pushed out of Izzie's arms and past a morose George and an unusually grim-looking Alex and into the corridor, where Sheperd sat on the floor staring listlessly at that closed door. Cristina wondered why he hadn't gone in with her. She couldn't find a reason other than that she must be in critical conditions and as such McDreamy couldn't be in the same room and assist Bailey. She heard the Chief's voice through the closed door and her heart shrunk a few inches from the pain caused by it. If he was in there…

**Stop it.**

When she pushed the door open she froze once again on the threshold; she couldn't help herself.

Cristina contemplated the situation, the absurdity of it all, whilst she was, once again, between two worlds and exposed to raw hurt as a result of her staged in the middle. She now desperately wanted to walk towards Meredith and see for herself, but somehow her soul knew that the pain would intensify to the point where she could barely stand it – her instinct sniffed the danger and reflexively made her wish to go back into the other world, where McDreamy sat looking completely wiped out, or perhaps where the rest of her family stood waiting for news –

And then a searing anger took over her fear. _Cowards!_

The thought was so explosive it shook Cristina out of the deep well of fear she'd suddenly fallen in, and a seething rage shook her into lucidity.

_How could they? They just stood there like good, pathetic little dogs, merely content to wait on Webber and Bailey and Burke to inform them that Meredith's conditions were critical. Lapping it all up like whipped animals that preferred to be useless than do the impossible to help their fallen friend in need._

_What surgeons were they, that they stood outside, just waiting, waiting waiting for the inevitable? What kind of dysfunctional, untraditional family did that?_

Cristina wasn't like that, though.

Sure, she was slowly dying an agonising death as she watched the three surgeons feverishly working on a deathly still Meredith and her failing heart, but she had to stay here, and look her person in the face as she was slowly sinking down, down away from her, in a place where Cristina couldn't possibly reach her, although her heart almost wished for it.

Cristina didn't think about her own escape to the locker rooms, even though she hadn't actually known what Meredith –

She moaned piteously.

Meredith was a good swimmer. She knew she was a very good swimmer. _How can a good swimmer now lay limp and dead and well-drowned on that bed?_

_Meredith, oh Meredith, what have you done?_

Was that what Cristina had seen into her eyes in the morning, now irretrievably an age away? Then her memory delivered the killing blow that almost brought Cristina to her knees. It had been Meredith; the woman Bailey had brought in – the nurse telling her a woman had almost drowned and her respiratory system was rapidly failing. Bailey was looking for assistance…Meredith.

And Cristina had brushed her away, because a drowning case wasn't interesting enough.

She needed to get out of there, she needed to be alone and beg for forgiveness and be able to sob about everything, because she was tired and bitter about being ordered away from the ambulance team, and angry because she hadn't been able to understand what Meredith had been trying to tell her, and messed up because of Burke's marriage proposal and she felt betrayed.

Betrayed by Izzie and George and Alex and McDreamy and Burke and Bailey and Webber because they had bothered to let her know now that Meredith was dying, and she was losing her, she was losing her person and it was something she knew she would not be able to cope with and she was stuck once more, caught in the trap, bleeding and thrashing about from the agony, and she was sure she'd black out to make this torture end –

Beeeeep.

Flat line.

It was in that moment that Cristina's world crumbled upon her shoulders, but Meredith's deathly-still face kept her from going under. She saw Bailey shake her head, her lips pursed in sadness, Webber saying something she didn't want to hear and Burke stepping away from the bed …

Anger had always been her supporter, her strength giver, her mentor and number one friend, it sustained her when all she wanted to do was to curl up and buckle down on the floor, collapse away from the pain. It was anger that strengthened her voice now, as she looked murderously at Bailey.** "Try again!"** was the forceful ram battering out of Cristina.

Her gaze fell for a moment on Burke and Webber then returned on Bailey's resigned features. They were the thing that angered her even more. She was being betrayed all over again, and by Bailey of all people, whom she respected like no other amongst the surgeons, and aspired to one day be just like her. How could she look up to her as her idol now? No longer would Bailey be Cristina's idol, not when she was letting her person die on that mangy hospital bed.

She hated them, hated them all for letting her person die and thus helping her fall into the darkest pit of despair she'd encountered yet. Cristina looked at Meredith again, a plastic tube coming out of her mouth, making the scene all the more grotesque.

_Meredith_…her heart cried out.

She drew closer to the pale woman, unaware of Bailey's pitying stare and Burke's intense gaze burning a hole into her, trying to support her grief and give her needed space at the same time. He was one of the few who truly understood Cristina's attachment to Meredith, and what she'd been for her and what she meant for her.

Her hand visibly trembled as it reached up near Meredith's face, hovering just a breath away, never quite touching, because surgeon/intern Yang knew she would be touching the coldness of clinical death, but Cristina the sister couldn't bring herself to desecrate her person in that way. Touching her meant acknowledging she was truly gone from her, one of the first and only people who truly understood her and still wanted to be with her, in a way only the deepest, sincerest friends could be.

Cristina tried to swallow the pit of anxiety and dread bubbling in her gut, threatening to choke her into crying out her misery. She opened her mouth, and suddenly her resolution to say goodbye properly without babbling like a fool was broken by her innermost need to have one last real talk with her person.

"Come back. Please, please just wake up. I … I'm so lost without you. One's person should never leave like this. I – I have something to tell you. I'm marrying Burke and and- and you are the one person I wanted to tell. You're the only one who … you always were."

Beep beep – beep beep.

Meredith's eyes fluttered open, slowly, gently, like a butterfly's wings, so delicate, so precious, Cristina's heart swelled with joy that was manifested on her face in rare tears scouring her slanted cheeks, warming her.

Their eyes clashed once more, and it was like coming home, like leaving all earthly thoughts and shooting up to the sky only to slowly descend in perfect harmony, together, like twin parachutes, spinning joyfully, innocence in a minor, swelling within her very being like the flutters of a humming bird, till they were both stripped naked of everything except the true, profound gladness they found in life.

"Meredith…" Cristina whispered reverently, joyfully, tears sliding her cheeks more quickly, at the sight of her person breathing in and looking at her in that 'her person' way that only Meredith could … she'd have to tell her about her marriage all over again, she supposed.

"Can I be your matron of honour?" Meredith spoke with difficulty after the tube was removed from her throat. Her voice was all craggy and broken – like a person who drowned in freezing water, died and came back amongst the living in the space of one hell-bound afternoon.

She sounded exactly like a survivor to Cristina.

Their hands simultaneously moved, one seeking the other, and clasped tightly in convergence, a welcoming back, a sweet promise between two people who were more than just colleagues, deeper than friends, more meaningful than family, and as such could not have a right label.

Both were in the same boat, figuratively speaking, and had never been so close to it as now.

Meredith felt the aftermath of drowning in the freezing water and Cristina felt like all that had happened that day would claw its way into her flesh and scar her for life. Both women were exhausted and exhilarated and other things that they, in suspended moment in time, could not describe.

Their fingers mingled in a tight clasp, their hands so different to each other, one slender and bony, somewhat frail, the other slim, long finger-tapered, strong and firm, digging almost painfully into each other's flesh with the intensity of the moment they were living, suspended up, up above all other unimportant people who would never be part of this, their circle.

Their faces mirrored each other as they slowly descended back to earth, though Meredith felt like she was ascending back to earth, whereas Cristina like she'd just leaped high above the ground.

Breathing in that unmistakeable scent of sterilisation and hospital smells had never felt so good to neither of them.


End file.
